Former president Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) office accused the Taipei District Court yesterday of failing to provide videotapes of 50 questioning sessions related to Chen's case, and said it would soon release details on prosecutors' allegedly illegal actions.
Chen’s lawyers asked the court for recordings of all questioning sessions related to his case and discovered the court had only videotaped 298 of the more than 300 sessions conducted, the office said in a press release.
The questioning of former Chinatrust Financial Holding Co vice chairman Jeffrey Koo Jr (辜仲諒), former minister of the interior Yu Cheng-hsien (余政憲), Quanta chairman Barry Lam (林百里), former Taipei Financial Center Corp chairwoman Diana Chen (陳敏薰), former Hsinchu Science Park Administration chief James Lee (李界木), former first lady Wu Shu-jen’s (吳淑珍) friend Tsai Ming-che (蔡銘哲) and Chen aide Tseng Tien-tsu (曾天賜) were only recorded in writing, and no videos or DVDs were provided to Chen's lawyers, the office said.
For example, the only record of prosecutors questioning Yu on Oct. 21 last year was a written one.
In the written statement, Yu, who prosecutors said had admitted leaking the names of the evaluation board for the Nangang Exhibition Center project to potential contractors, asked to become a prosecution witness.
Chen's office condemned the court for failing to provide videotapes of the session, and demanded the court explain why Yu decided to turn witness.
Chen's office also asked the court to provide recordings of the questioning of Yuanta Financial Holding Co chief operating officer Michael Ma (馬維辰) on Nov. 27. Ma was named as a defendant on suspicion of helping Chen and Wu transfer money to overseas accounts.
In the written record, Ma accused former Central Investment Corp chairman Chang Che-chen (張哲琛) of asking for bribes during negotiations for the purchase of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-owned enterprise.
Ma told prosecutors that Chang, who has served as head of the KMT's administrative and management department, had asked for a NT$2 billion (US$57.5 million) commission based on the NT$16 billion purchase price.
Chen's office said his defense team wanted to view the videotape of Ma's interrogation to learn more about Chang's alleged bribe taking.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater